It's Sunday morning. I feel the call to preach, brothers and sisters. I come from a long line of preachers. Preacher George T. Peek was my father's father, a preacher (who preached against neckties and therefore has a walk-in part in my novel), as were his father and his father and his father... and so on, all the way back to the hills of Derbyshire. (Of course, only the men -- women are to shut the hell up in Christendom).
There was always a Peek in every generation -- at least one -- who went opposite the family. In NC, there was William Peek, whose grave is in a Methodist cemetery near a church where he preached, having moved to Madison county to get away from his Baptist siblings who were contentious that he'd married a native woman named Isabelle. They had a daughter named Nora who fell in the creek there in intemperate weather during an all day dinner-type of thing and took ill and died young. I have an oval shaped, halved black stone from that creek.
So, what shall I preach about? ... ... ...
There was this preacher whose name was Darrel who we ran into once in a church in the edge of Virginia . Darrell played a shofar. Have you ever heard one? I love the sound! A fellow in a church I once attended played a trumpet -- that was cool, too. It wasn't all hell and brimstone, there were moments.
Anyway, Darrell couldn't get the word of the lord to come through and the night was wearing on and he had no sermon for the next day and he was getting a bit desperate. He broke out his bottle of best whiskey -- or maybe it was wine -- and took a shot and he asked the Lord for his sermon subject. If the Lord's not speaking, well, neither can the preacher. He had preacher-block in a bad way. But he had another shot of that wine and he waited.
Into his second bottle, the Lord spoke and Darrell had his message and he gave it that day. I don't remember what it was about, but I do remember him tellling us how he got the message. Thrilled my Pagan heart to hear it and made me jolly for the rest of the day.
Oh, now I know what I wanted to preacher on about.
There are no born Christians. That's why they have to do that "born-again" thing. Infants are not born Christian -- not even if their family is all about that thing. Every child born on Earth is a Pagan until taught otherwise. They worship their Mama and their Papa and the sun and dirt and trees and sing their little baby songs to the elements. Good-night Moon becomes their favorite book when they get to be toddlers and then they're taught this nutty bullshit that they are separated from their Creator -- which is a lie. They're taught they have to not do whatever it is that they naturally do and to do whatever it is that they don't naturally do. And that, friends, is why the world is screwed up.
Also, it doesn't help to just transfer the bondage of that into another religion with its own bondage. Wicca? Buddhism. Druidism? Whatever. Ok, if you want to learn a bunch of stuff, then fine, do it -- but don't cling there. You're following footsteps of people who make shit up and tell you it's real. You know what's real and what isn't -- so keep your wits about you and don't be lied to.
Some of what they're telling you is viable -- just like any religion, but if you have to follow a bunch of arbitrary rules to play in their sandbox, then only do that if rules make you feel good. If you want all that kind of thing and it makes you more aware of who you are, that's a good -- do that. But if it limits your self-expression and your spiritual evolution, then move on. Cause the problem is, someone may have opened a pathway to real experiences of the past, but then they took that freedom and joy and they dipped it in concrete and now it's just a statue of itself.
There's an old adage that you have to learn the rules before you break them. I would never have gotten free of Chrisianity if I hadn't first been a damn good Christian. I had the discipline. I learned to pray without ceasing, to love my enemies, to read holy writ daily, and walk my talk. THEN, I evolved.
So, whatever religion you've surrounded yourself with, dig in and learn all that there is to learn. Then walk out the door into your own real world and use what you've acquired. It does help, sometimes to have a container to put all that freedom in -- but don't let anyone put a lid on it.
Amenandamenandamenandamen
The collection plate will make it's rounds while the choir sings -- yadda, yadda, yadda..
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